Driving through Hagby parish in Uppland on a tiny road Friday, I was lucky enough to cross the bridge at Focksta right at the moment when the afternoon sun hit this lovely runestone straight on. I didn’t even have to get out of the car to take the photograph.

Dating from the early 11th century, the stone is an unsigned work of Åsmund Kåresson (U 875). It’s unusual in that it has a couple of Bronze Age cupmarks too. The inscription reads, “Tyrvi and Ingegärd and Tjälve had this stone erected after Kalv, Tyrvi’s husband. May God and God’s mother help his spirit.”

Note the cross and the prayer. Did you know that a huge majority of the runic inscriptions date from after the Christianisation of Scandinavia? The neo-Pagans should do their scrying in Roman capitals instead.

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Comments

Nice photograph. Thank you for posting it. Yes, I did know that a great many runestones were erected by Christians and had Christian messages on it. When confronted by neo-Pagans and other interested folks, I usually recommend Birgit Sawyer’s book.

Yet what is interesting to me is the picture–not the runic text (please pardon the phrase). While I’m willing to acknowledge the importance of the text, I’ve not really encountered many folks discussing the picture. Then again, I’ve not really studied that in any depth.

Scandy paganism was highly synchretist long before the Viking Period, to the extent that some motifs in the mythology can easily be traced back to the Bible. But Christianity demanded exclusivity, and Scandies knew this when conversion started.

I’ve never worked with carved stone myself. But I know Sweden’s best rock art surveyors. They use oblique lighting and chalk powder mixed with water, then full-scale tracing on transparent plastic film, which they then scan into a computer and trace yet again.